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<title>It Will Always Lead To This by SecondStarfall (beantiger)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26328175">It Will Always Lead To This</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall'>SecondStarfall (beantiger)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Second Starfall Stories [51]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Castles, Cute, Established Relationship, F/F, Fantasy, Flash Fic, Flashbacks, Fluff, Happy Ending, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Themes, Lesbian Character, Marriage, Medieval, No Lesbians Die, Original Character(s), POV Second Person, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Royalty, True Love, War</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:15:30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>853</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26328175</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The military. 2nd Infantry Company. How the weeks trudging through strange city-states seemed to pass in a never-ending, murky dusk. How you hadn’t met her yet but you knew you had to keep on, keep on, one foot in front of the other. You kept on because something good had to wait at the end of all the hurt and that something good was Valériane all along.</i>
</p><p>***</p><p>A week in the life of a royal guard.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Female Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>The Second Starfall Stories [51]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>It Will Always Lead To This</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is not the Marlesse/Valériane story I talked about writing last week, but we'll get there. Have this as a teaser. </p><p><b>SUGGESTED RE-READING:</b> <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22549876">"A Way To Spend A Wedding Night."</a> Mar and Val are married at this point.</p><p>✨ [<a href="https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline">see the full SecStar timeline</a> | <a href="https://secondstarfall.com/">check out the SecStar wiki</a>] ✨</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    
  </p>
</div>This week—as with every other—you are Marlesse de la Mer, age twenty-eight. You are the Chief of the Althussian Royal Guard, and you like your job.<div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>On Monday, you inventory Quellheart Keep’s various arms. Broadswords and warhammers and rusting shields emblazoned with the bloody maws of lions, etc. Then: paperwork.<p>You meet with the castellan about defending the household during times of warfare. You forget what you talked about immediately afterward. Then: paperwork. </p><p>In the evening, the Queen’s High Marshal commends you on your tireless work ethic and starts to reminisce about the White Fox Wars. Over your shared dinner, his words wander into the dark. You excuse yourself and fall asleep in your office, a ticking sound lulling you into dreams. It is eight o’clock at night.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>On Tuesday, you wake up at an unsaintly hour for hurried paperwork catch-up.<p>Then: outdoor drills with your lads and ladies. </p><p>Then: catch-up on the catch-up. </p><p>Then: night again, as drastic as a summer storm. You squeeze in a moment to answer your brothers’ warm-hearted letters. You later dream of questions: what do you do when the unknown army approaches? When disheveled vagrants ask for refuge? When the assassin pads into Princess Honorine’s chambers?</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Wednesday: drills, paperwork, paperwork, drills. Words in books jumbling themselves. You say a lot of, <i>First: de-escalate, disarm.</i> You say a lot of, <i>Talk them down. It works. Trust me.</i> The elder guards roll their eyes at you.<p>All your actions now blend together, much as rain and snow become sleet. </p><p>When the moon crawls above (bless the saints for the days passing like this), you take night-watch. You stand alone by the parapet at the north wall, staring into the horizon, your eyes resting on anything but the botanist’s tower at the keep’s far corner. If you look, you will yearn. You will yearn, and the hours will halt, and time will pull you apart for the rest of the week.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Thursday. Your body gifts you four hours of sleep—more than usual. Today: new recruits. You train them, enjoy their presence, their energy, their quick learning. They ask about the incident with the werewolf and you pooh-pooh it, because you never killed a werewolf, not once. Plenty of others—too many others—just not a werewolf. But you don’t tell them that.<p>Then: you assign patrols for the next week. Then: you take night-watch. You stand alone by the parapet at the north wall, etc, etc. When the stars trickle to life over the horizon, you smile. You sing their stories to yourself as gently as a cat’s purr. You remember serenading your wife Valériane the morning after your wedding and—</p><p>Ah, there’s the yearning.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Friday. Last night, you dreamed of burying Valériane. Dirt in her mouth and in her eyes. A pallor on her cheeks. And all the while, that ticking sound again. Only two hours of sleep graced you—not good.<p>Late in the morning, courtier children launch firecrackers down the hall during your meeting with the Queen. A funny joke. How could they have known? You end up bouncing mentally along a timeline. Back to war. Back to present. Back to war. Two hours slog by as you panic in your office. </p><p>Then: little Simone Hugo finds you at two o’clock and puts her broad wolf-head in your lap. The weight of it renews your senses. You remember that your wife is alive. You remember that many are still alive. And you never killed a werewolf.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>On Saturday, you release the drunkards in the dungeon cells, and the other sad luckless folk found in the wrong place at the wrong time. <i>What must it be like,</i> you think, <i>to go well and truly free? Why,</i> you think, <i>am I even wondering?</i><p>Tonight—no, no.</p><p>There’s preparing to do. The guards need new arms and the Queen’s Exchequer is loath to give up any funding for it. That’s next week, that meeting. A debate for the ages. Important business, of course, of course. </p><p>But tonight—yes—there is Valériane. Valériane! </p><p>You try to keep focused until the sun drops. </p><p>At the end of the day you find the botanist’s tower, you find the botanist, you find her lap. Smelling of lavender and mint, she traces her pointer finger along the scars on your cheek as you tell her about your adolescence.</p><p>The military. 2nd Infantry Company. How the weeks trudging through strange city-states seemed to pass in a never-ending, murky dusk. How you hadn’t met her yet but you knew you had to keep on, keep on, one foot in front of the other. You kept on because something good had to wait at the end of all the hurt and that something good was Valériane all along.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>Sunday is your day off. You wrap up with your wife and a quilt and gossip. The only assignment: toss yourself into love, toss yourself into love, again and again. She wipes the dirt off her forehead and the sweat off yours, and you tell her: <i>It always leads to this. It will always lead to this.</i>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>✨ [<a href="https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline">see the full SecStar timeline</a> | <a href="https://secondstarfall.com/">check out the SecStar wiki</a>] ✨</p><p><b>AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:</b> Whoops, I'm soft 'n' gay.</p><p>Ever wondered what it is that Marlesse actually DOES for a living? Here you go.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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